You get a cancellation! And you get a cancellation! And you get a cancellation! Everybody gets a cancellation!!!

Big day for falling axes in the TV biz. The CW officially pulled the plug on its disastrous outsourced Sunday lineup, replacing "Valentine, Inc." and "Easy Money" with syndicated movies and, in a salute to peanut-lovers everywhere, "Jericho" reruns. (Now, if only they could add "Moonlight" to the mix...) ABC declined to give back nine orders to "Pushing Daisies," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Eli Stone," effectively canceling all three once their initial run of 13 episodes is up. (Bryan Fuller is still talking about wrapping up all the "Pushing Daisies" stories in comic book form.)

On the good news side, ABC finally announced a premiere date and timeslot for "Scrubs," which will air Tuesdays at 9:30 (and will double up at 9 its first two weeks), along with other midseason changes that will have "Private Practice" moving to the post-"Grey's Anatomy" timeslot and "Life on Mars" (which got a pick-up for four more episodes) airing after "Lost" on Wednesdays at 10.

Still need to get to this week's "Pushing Daisies." Ah, well. I figured it'd be canceled three episodes in. Instead, it was a surprise success at first before the ratings started to drop and then the strike effectively killed it. It's kind of a miracle we got 22 episodes of such a weird show on a major broadcast network. Click here to read the full post

Hey, remember these? Private Practice & Dirty Sexy Money return

While I've been all geeked up about the return of re-freshman series "Chuck" and "Pushing Daisies" (and, to a lesser extent, "Life"), it's been hard for me to work up much enthusiasm (or time) to write about the returns of "Private Practice" and "Dirty Sexy Money," which are also back tonight.

While I think the "Private Practice" season premiere makes a couple of good course corrections (more focus on medicine, slightly less on relationship angst), I still don't care about anybody on the show but Kate Walsh. And while I think Lucy Liu is an interesting addition to the already overcrowded "Dirty Sexy Money" ensemble, none of the characters have ever popped for me enough to get over my ambivalence about primetime soaps.

Still, they're both back on tonight, so feel free to use this post to talk about their season premieres. Not sure how long either one will remain in the viewing and blogging rotation, but at least we'll have October 1. Click here to read the full post

Dandy cozy funny

Spoilers for, in order, "Pushing Daisies," "Private Practice," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "American's Next Top Model" coming up just as soon as I hold my breath until I turn blue...

Wow. If the "Pushing Daisies" pilot bordered on too twee, I'm not even sure what adjective can capture episode two, which featured Chi McBride knitting himself some gun cozies, Kristen Chenoweth rocking out to "Hopelessly Devoted To You" and, oh yeah, a car that runs on dandelions. I never fell for Bryan Fuller's previous shows because they always seemed too hopelessly devoted to their own selves. The first "Pushing Daisies" episode somehow avoided that trap, but this one was perilously close.

On the plus side, it still looked amazing, and I'd be tempted to tune in every week just for that... except that, according to those LA Times stories, this was the last episode made before Warner Bros. tightened the budget and banned Barry Sonnenfeld from directing. How many weeks before we get a bottle show where all the regulars are locked in the Pie Hole for an hour?

Also on the plus side, Jim Dale narrating Young Ned's misadventures in prep school. If JK Rowling isn't going to give us an eighth Harry Potter book for Dale to read aloud, this may be the closest we'll get.

I want to see what a regular episode of this show looks like before I decide whether the sugar shock factor is too high to bother with.

If I didn't know that ABC was showing the early "Private Practice" episodes out of order, and that Shonda had gone back and rewritten some of the scenes from the premiere to make Addison seem tougher, I'd be heading for the hills, because the Addison in this episode (originally planned as the second) was the same dishrag little girl that she was back in that heinous backdoor pilot. And since the other characters -- save Cooper and maybe Violet (if the writers can ever free her of stalking her ex) -- are complete personality vacuums, Addison's really the only reason I'm watching. Fix her in a hurry, or else. So far, all three regular episodes have been largely carried by the guest stars (the crazy lady on the floor and the store manager, the two moms and the Thirtysomething Virgin), and that's just not enough to sustain a following long-term.

"Dirty Sexy Money" continues to be a good low nutritional content treat, with a red carpet catfight (and Juliet foolishly letting the press in on the lame origin of her feud), many entrances by "Rebecca Colfax, Darling family publicist," much talk of a very special sexual position involving banking, the very funny montage of Nick interrogating the Darling kids, bad Australian accents and some intrigue involving the still-unseen Blair Underwood as Simon Elder. And yet, as is true of the entire Berlanti ouevre, the show is able to turn off the silly switch when needed and present some genuine emotion, in this case revealing how much Patrick loves Carmelita (who, unlike her counterpart on "Big Shots," doesn't seem to be a hooker) and vice versa. Easy joke in the pilot, kinda moving in episode three. Not bad.

Finally, a question for the more hardcore "America's Next Top Model" fans: did this show so blatantly telegraph its exits back in the days before the writers (or story editors, or whatever you want to call them) first started fighting with management over salary and unfair treatment? Because this is three weeks in a row, I think, where the first girl to give a talking head has gone home. Within the first two minutes, I knew the bottom two would include Victoria and Saleisha (though Jenah's meltdown during the photo shoot briefly had me doubting myself). My wife's on Team Heather, and was worried when they made her dress up like a weed (but not, sadly, a dandelion), but I told her, "Don't worry. She's had almost no screen time this episode. She's not going anywhere." "Amazing Race" and, when I still watch it, "Survivor," seem just as blatant in telling you who's about to lose. Have all the reality competition shows gotten worse at this, or have we all just watched so much that we can recognize all the old tricks?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Wednesday rookie round-up

Spoilers for, in order, "Bionic Woman," "Dirty Sexy Money," "Life" and "Back To You" coming up just as soon as I eat a tangelo...

I made most of my complaints with "Bionic Woman" clear in the column -- Michelle Ryan's bland, the fight scenes aren't that impressive, etc. -- but I had a few other issues. First, while I've enjoyed Jason Smilovic's Mamet-lite dialogue on other shows like "Karen Sisco" and "Kidnapped," there are moments here where it really goes awry, notably the "like a ride at Disneyland" exchange between Sarah Corvus and the German guy. ("Which one?" "I've never been." Then why the bleep did you bring it up? Who talks like that?) Second, there were two scenes that were borrowed pretty liberally from comic book movies: Jamie's sprint past the car from a famous deleted scene from the original "Superman" (where the little girl is revealed to be a young Lois Lane), and Jamie's tentative jump across the roof from the first Sam Raimi "Spider-Man." I've got no problem with homage and even outright theft in some cases -- if I didn't, I couldn't watch "Heroes" -- but both of those scenes in their original form had a sense of joy that's almost entirely lacking from the grim, grim "Bionic Woman." The bleakness of David Eick's work with Ron Moore on "Battlestar Galactica" works because of the premise -- humanity nearly annihilated and on the run from the annihilators isn't exactly a fun sexy time, you know? -- and Jamie's initial freak-out at going bionic mirrors the original character's reaction back in the "Six Million Dollar Man" episodes that introduced her. But I think one of the reasons I and so many other critics responded so strongly to Katee Sackhoff as Sarah -- aside from the massive charisma advantage she has over Ryan -- is that she's the only person in the entire show who seems to be enjoying herself.

I like Smilovic and Eick's other work, and there are enough glimmers of something potentially great -- notably the opening scene with Corvus taking two to the chest and apparently not dying -- that I'm far from giving up on the show, but it's not remotely as good as I was hoping.

When I first watched the "Dirty Sexy Money" pilot back in June, I was engaged but not overly jazzed by it, but when I went back to watch it again last week -- followed by a solid later episode -- I found myself enjoying it significantly more. I'd still put it in about fourth place of the new shows (behind "Reaper," "Chuck" and "Pushing Daisies"), but comfortably ahead of everything else, and much of my previous ambivalence comes from my general lack of interest in traditional soaps. (It's the same reason I've never entirely warmed to "Ugly Betty," even though I recognize all the good stuff on that show.)

Anyway, brief specifics, as I already covered a lot in my review. First, I like Peter Krause a lot more when he's using his tightly-wound powers of self-righteousness in the service of comedy ("Sports Night") rather than drama ("Six Feet Under," where Nate was consistently my least favorite part of the show), and I'm glad that Craig Wright and Berlanti seem to agree with that, as he spends so much of both the pilot and the other episode I saw getting flustered with the petty, entitled, naive Darlings. I'm not entirely sold on Natalie Zea as this legendary seductress -- and given her character's connection to Krause's, she's arguably the most important of the five siblings -- but I was greatly amused by Billy Baldwin and Glenn Fitzgerald as the angry minister, and also by the notion that Samaire Armstrong's character would care about succeeding on her own merits, since that thought has no doubt never entered the real Paris' head. Again, given my personal tastes, I'm not sure this is a show I would watch long-term if I had a different job, but I think Wright and Berlanti are doing a solid job so far.

"Life" in a nutshell: He loves fruit! Is amazed by modern technology! Loves more fruit! Loves his Zen koans! Invades personal space like he's Goren from "Criminal Intent"! Loves even more fruit! Is not attached to that car! Unless there's fruit involved!

I so, so wanted to like this show -- Damian Lewis has vast reservoirs of goodwill stored with me for playing Dick Winters in "Band of Brothers" -- but Charlie Crews annoys the hell out of me (which is hard to do, given the aforementioned goodwill), I have no idea whether Sarah Shahi can act (and was amused to see the writers contrive a shower scene for her in the middle of an arrest), and the case in both this episode and the second one bored me to tears. Out of loyalty to Lewis, I'll give this bad imitation "House" one more shot with the third episode, but barring a miraculous turnaround, I'm out.

Finally, episode two of "Back To You" was like an odd mirror image of the pilot. In the first episode, it felt like Grammer and Heaton got most of the genuine characterization and handful of good lines (mainly Chuck's speech about returning to Pittsburgh, delivered seconds after realizing that he had a daughter) while the supporting characters were the broadest, sitcommiest types available. Here, Chuck and Kelly are in the middle of a dead goldfish plot that should have been banned from all sitcom writing rooms circa 1988, while the subplot about Gary trying to look macho in the face of the taser zap was really funny. It's broad physical humor, sure, but at least it was in service to some vaguely recognizable human behavior, in that local news reporters have to do stupid stunts like that all the time, and here we just followed the premise to its logical conclusion.

Ratings for the premiere were good, not great, and my feelings about the show are a shade below that: mediocre, not good. My wife loves traditional sitcoms, so I suspect I'm not done with "Back To You" just yet.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Money makes the new season go ‘round

Today's All TV column looks at three new shows about the filthy rich: "Dirty Sexy Money," "Big Shots" and "Life":

"The love of money is the root of all evil," explains Nick George, hero of the new soap "Dirty Sexy Money" (10 p.m., Ch. 7). "That’s what they say, anyway. Money makes everything go wrong."

Money happens to be the root of a lot of new TV this fall. We’ve already seen the CW’s "Gossip Girl," about the children of Manhattan’s elite, and CBS’ "Cane," about a Miami sugar and rum dynasty. Now comes "Dirty Sexy Money," in which Nick (Peter Krause) goes to work for a filthy rich and powerful Manhattan family; plus tomorrow night’s debut of "Big Shots" (Thursday at 10, Ch. 7), about four Master of the Universe types who get together to play golf and moan about how tough their lives are.

But where the money — among other things — makes everything on "Big Shots" go wrong, "Dirty Sexy Money" finds so many ways to tackle this world the right way.

To read the full thing, click here. Click here to read the full post